Once we arrive at the conclusion that mere matter and natural laws are not sufficient to explain the existence of the universe and life, but a super intelligence is, then what? For some, this begins a life of exploration. Others turn the matter over to organized religions that claim to be a conduit to the creator. For yet others, who assume supernatural is synonymous with superstition, it means stopping before they begin.
The word supernatural is laden with emotion and confusion. It connotes a surrealism, subjectivity and phantasm that makes it easy to set aside, reject or use to justify an agenda. In religions it circumscribes a sacred domain where profane and mundane science cannot tread and where religious leaders can claim special knowledge and exert power. Materialists use the word to smugly describe the place where people go when they have abandoned science and reason.
Here's the point I would like to make that will clear the air for all sides and create common ground for progress: there is no supernatural; there is only natural.
This is why I can say such a thing. To know what supernatural is, natural must be defined. The prefix, "super," means beyond, or exceeding. So we must know where "natural" ends before we can know what is beyond it. The problem is, no one would (a better word is should) be so silly or bold as to define the limits of natural. That's because philosophic and religious ideas that separate natural from supernatural have fallen one after another to the revelations of scientific exploration. Lightning turned out not to be arrows in the quivers of supernatural gods, disease was not supernatural devil possession and the universe was not a supernatural firmament circling the Earth.
In earlier times, the state was religion and the church defined science. Ancient Egypt and Rome typified this. There was no real separation of secular from religious. All was hunky dory. Then along came the scientific revolution, beginning in the 17th century, and science decided to depart from the fold. A truce was made and a deal struck whereby the church could have the supernatural, and science would take the natural. The fear of being shot down yet again by science has created a mood of capitulation by religions. They have surrendered even where they need not have, such as with the issue of evolution.
In any case, this unwritten agreement about a division of authority worked out pretty well until quantum physics showed that there was no real divide between the physical and non physical (the supernatural). Now we are once again at the point where all knowledge properly belongs under one header: reality-truth-nature.
This is an interesting state of affairs, not particularly comfortable for either side. Religion sees its supernatural being whittled away by advancing science; science sees its materialism vaporizing into a quantum world that has flavors of religion.
Exploration is the enemy of the supernatural. The more we learn, the more natural there is and the less supernatural. That does not bode well for the word. When a concept keeps caving in to the pressure of advancing knowledge, it may be a good time to retire it. If we do, a reason for much of the conflict between science and religion will disappear.
Since truth is our objective, discarding a word should not be a problem. That which is revealed from nature, natural things, is just truth. There is neither super-truth nor super-nature. Truth is truth. We may not have fully discovered all the truth nature contains - and we certainly haven't - but that does not make the yet unknown super-truth or supernatural.
All things of truth are natural, even that which we cannot see, hear, feel, smell, touch or even conceptualize. Radio waves are natural, X-rays are, as are microbes, molecules, atoms and quanta, even though they are invisible, unknown to our naked senses and fundamentally inconceivable. There are infinite unknowns beyond our perception and even our technology. Is it all supernatural or is it just nature yet undiscovered or poorly understood? That's rhetorical. Is it not the height of egocentricity and an outrageous curiosity of humans that we would define the world as divided into natural and supernatural based upon what we humans have or have not discovered or understand?
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